40 Islam and Modernity
scholars were nevertheless divided on the question whether Muslim societies can
be modernised. One group maintained that ‘Islam is in its very nature incapable
of reform and progressive adaptation to the expansion of human knowledge’
(Stoddard 1921: 33). In their view, Muslim societies could not survive in the
process of global change. Others believed that Muslim societies have no choice
but to modernise. However, they could do so only by adopting the Western
model.
A leading representative of the fi rst approach in the academic world of
the post-Second World War era was Gustave E. von Grunebaum (1909–72).
His position can be considered a continuation of the view of Islam manifested
by Becker, but articulated instead from a perspective that capitalised on the
Weberian teachings and in particular on their rigorously comparative approach
pivoted on a keen understanding of how Western uniqueness happened to
become universally normative. As a result, ‘he was convinced that it was his
duty to interpret Islam from the point of view of the Westerner deeply steeped
in his own civilisation at its best’ (Rosenthal 1973: 356). On the one hand, he
celebrated the Weberian approach and its underlying rationalist spirit as ‘an
end confi ned to the most modern West’ (von Grunebaum 1964: 43). On the
other, for him Islam was completely at the mercy of Western-led modernisation
(von der Mehden 1986: 11).
With such an approach and within this methodological framework, von
Grunebaun saw his task as a post-Weberian Islamologist as consisting of reinter-
preting the ranking of the ‘inner’ factors in the unfolding of Islamic civilisation
and in its allegedly unsuccessful encounter with modernity. Relying on the cul-
tural sociologist Alfred L. Kroeber (1876–1960), he saw in the message of Islam
a dilution of the inner impetus of Christian faith (von Grunebaum 1964: 7) – an
idea that refl ects Weber’s poor consideration of Islam for allegedly being a trivi-
alised manifestation of Near Eastern religious monotheism and spirituality, one
projected outwardly towards immediate rewards rather than, like Christianity,
inwardly towards a realm of pure values.
According to von Grunebaum, this specifi c defi cit was magnifi ed in the
modern era by the fact that Islam did not undergo the process of self-renewal
that the West had been through since after the Protestant Reformation. This
stress on reformation often became a leitmotif in Western approaches to the
issue of Islam and modernity. Based on the Western Christian trajectory,
scholars anticipated a reformation in Islam as a requirement for renaissance.
Consequently, the meaning of reform was limited to the pattern of Western
Reformation, and the continuing reform efforts within Islamic traditions
were not given enough weight. While clearly the Protestant Reformation had
been the outcome of a larger cultural and political crisis in Western Europe
(see Chapter 1 in this volume), such modern crises were considered by von
Grunebaum to be highly productive of forms of social power. He viewed